Derbyshire Traditions

The days are long gone since the industries of wool, lead, iron, coal and cotton provided Derbyshire with the majority of its income. Today many parts of the county rely on tourism, especially in and around the Peak District, and specifically within the boundaries of the Peak District National Park.

Visitors come from all over the world to enjoy the pleasures of Derbyshire’s spectacular and diverse landscape, set with its beautiful dales, lofty peaks and wonderful historic villages. Many are fascinated by the ancient local customs unique to the county, stories and pictures of which fill countless guide books, and the camera lenses of millions of visitors every year. Perhaps favourite amongst them are the seasonal Well Dressings which take place annually in many country villages throughout the Peak. There’s the annual Ashbourne Shrovetide Football game, Castleton Garland Festival, Wirksworth Church Clypping Ceremony, Matlock Bath Venetian Nights, and numerous annual gatherings, carnivals and festivals throughout the county.

Most are well documented and an attraction and fascination to the tourists who flock to them in droves, but there is one particular local custom, or annual tradition which the tourists hardly ever see – because it takes place out of season when the holidaymakers have all gone home!

The Winster Guisers

If you happen to be in Derbyshire when pantomime season comes around again, and you’ve left it too late to get tickets, don’t worry – Cinderella shall go to the ball – and for the price of a pint!

The ghost of Christmas Past is alive and well, certainly full of spirit – and probably a drop or two of good Derbyshire ale – and at the risk of being literally correct for a change, dare I say, – `masquerading in the guise of mummers’? For that is exactly what the Winster Guisers do, and oh – what a pantomime!

Performing at various venues around Derbyshire’s White Peak villages during the festive season, the Winster Guisers are a troupe of local strolling players who every Christmas bring a traditional mix of colourful drama, festive cheer, and sometimes hysterical hilarity to the unsuspecting public in a number of Peak District pubs. For the uninitiated, mumming and guising are one and the same and take many different forms, depending on location and tradition.

According to the dictionary a `mummer’ is `one who masquerades in a folk play, usually at Christmas’ – and `mumming’ is `a show without reality; a foolish ceremonial’, whilst a `guiser’ is `a person in disguise, dressed up in costume; a Christmas mummer; one who goes guising’.

Well, in Winster and surrounding villages each Christmas, eleven go guising – and the same troupe have done so now since Allan Stone and his ten merry men – or rather eight merry men, an old woman and a dead horse – breathed new life into an ancient and half-forgotten tradition in Winster twenty five years ago.

At his Winster home Allan says, "The seasonal round of English life was once marked by ceremonials and rituals performed exclusively by men wearing disguise, and though the origins of mumming and guising are uncertain and differ from place to place, they may be connected with pre-Christian, possibly Celtic fertility rituals – though, he added wryly, "this is clearly not what gives guising its undeniable vitality today"?!

Performances are usually over the Christmas and New Year period, though they can, and do, range from Halloween to Easter, and in Derbyshire may be given in the streets, public houses, village halls, large private houses and even outlying farms.

I also learned that there are mumming and guising traditions in a variety of forms throughout the world, and that the rather bold intrusion upon privacy employed is part and parcel of all true mumming traditions. In the past the players demanded free ale in pubs and entry into houses, and it was regarded as unlucky to turn them away, although, as Allan admits, "these days the Winster Guisers always check with the landlord or householder first!"?. The house-visit is an integral part of the mumming tradition in places as diverse as Scotland and Newfoundland, and as Allan explained,

"Mumming is the common term, but this is also used to describe the black-faced children who sweep the hearths of houses, making a continuous humming sound as they go, in both South-East Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire on New Year’s Eve"?. He went on, "In both Derbyshire and nearby Staffordshire the performers are known as guisers, as were the men and women of Cornwall who changed clothes, blackened their faces, and danced in the streets, so mumming and guising are the same, said Allan, "what differs are the various core traditions.

Although widely scattered geographically these survivals of ancient tradition still retain elements common to each other and to versions long since extinct."? For example, in Shetland, with its mix of Nordic folk-lore and Celtic tradition perhaps the world’s most famous guising ceremony takes place in the capital, Lerwick, every New Year’s Eve.

From each settlement throughout the islands from Christmas Day onwards, groups of guisers travel from house to house performing according to their own local tradition. One week later they all gather at Lerwick on New Year’s Eve for the festival of Up-Helly-A, which culminates with a replica Viking long-boat – symbolising the old year and containing an authentic brushwood funeral pyre – being set ablaze and pushed out to sea by a horde of Shetland guisers wearing horned helmets, strange garb, and weilding axes and spears, whilst others chant traditional rhymes from atop the harbour wall!

However, the Winster Guisers perform a rather less spectacular masquerade than their Shetland counterparts, though equally enthralling and entertaining – and far more hilarious. It is based on the Winster traditional, the characters and costumes of which are taken from an old photograph of Winster guisers standing outside Winster Hall around 1868/70. At that time Winster Hall was owned by writer and antiquarian Llewellyn Jewitt, who in his journal on Boxing Day 1868 wrote, "This evening we had several sets of children `guising,’ i.e. dressed up in all sorts of queer ways, and singing one song or another. The `Hobby Horse came too. Five men, one as a devil, one as a woman, one as an old woman with a besom, one with a hobby horse.. we had them in the kitchen and gave them money"?. Again on December 30th Jewitt writes, "This evening had two parties of guisers in the house. The first -five- were so dull and boring that I packed them off soon. The second set -eleven- with `Snap-Dragon’ and two `Hobby Horses’ were very good, and sang and recited well"?.

Writer and local historian Julie Bunting notes, "Once widespread, the old custom of guising was well established in numerous peakland villages until the First World War. Even as late as the 1940’s boys of Biggin near Hartington performed a guising play learnt from older boys as they grew up"?. The custom was lost to Winster too until, armed with the Winster Hall photograph, Allan Stone and his intrepid troupe manufactured exact replicas of the Victorian `guising’ costumes, and together with character’s names and dialogue gleaned from the distant recollections of the fading memories of elderly residents – and the black-painted skull of a dead horse – decided to re-launch an almost forgotten tradition – and Winster Guisers were re-born!

The characters are The Enterer In (Brian Skyrme), St.George (Ivan Walters), Black Prince (Leon Stone), King of Egypt (Rob Greatorex), Old Woman (Bill Glossop), Doctor (Allan Stone), Beelzebub (Arthur Elliott), Little Johnny Jack (John Stone), Devilly Doubt (Frank Mason), Groom (Rod Shiers), and Dead Horse (Lee Purslow). Amazingly, by tradition the horse is actually made from the black painted skull of a dead horse, varnished and with painted eyes and ears added, and a broomstick with a blanket or coat thrown over it. The flexible jawbone is worked by elastic from beneath the blanket! At the end of each performance a collection is taken and the proceeds donated to charity.

For those who have never witnessed the Winster Guisers in action, I can promise that it is a traditional Derbyshire festive experience that you will never forget,and of course, I’ve purposefully refrained from giving away the plot, so that the element of surprise will remain – a surprise!

"Ullo, "˜Ullo, "˜Ullo, – What’s All This Then…"??

The Policing of Derbyshire

It is a policeman’s lot to keep the peace and uphold the law, the long arm of which stretches back almost two thousand years to Roman times – but a policeman’s lot was very little – until the `modern’ police force came into being in the 19th century.

Prior to this the County’s felons were liable to have their collars felt by either a part-time town Constable or in rural areas by a local landowner, for it was not until 1856 that an act was passed extending modern police powers to the rural areas of Britain.

There has always been a dichotomy in keeping order in Derbyshire: urban policing and policing the countryside. This was recognised by the Romans who had a formal urban police force known as the Vigiles, (hence the term Vigilantes) responsible for public order and fire-watching on behalf of two Drumvirs and the Decurions who were annually elected to preside over the administration of the main towns of Derby and Chesterfield. They had no jurisdiction in rural areas and it was left to the local landowners to maintain law and order.

Anglo-Saxon England operated a system of personal responsibility in which all free men were responsible for the behaviour of their fellows. In time this system was formalised into local tax-gathering areas known as Tithings – under the control of an official Tithingman. Groups of Tithings were formed into Hundreds under the control of a Hundredman, thus the Tithingman was ultimately responsible to the Hundredman. Each free man swore a `view of flankpledge’ which obliged him to take his share in law and order as part of his obligations as a landowner. The Hundredman was chief tax gatherer, administrator and judge and was in turn responsible to the Shire Reeve, – a term from which the word `Sheriff’ evolved.

Under this system victims of crime were responsible for bringing the perpetrator to justice and all were obliged to pursue wrongdoers, an act referred to as `raising a hue and cry’.

The Norman Conquest changed little. By the Statute of Winchester (1287) Constables were appointed in parishes and for manors to oversee law and order. The Statute of Winchester merely codified previous practice:

1. It was the duty of all free men to maintain the King’s peace; anyone had the power to arrest an offender.

2. The Constable (part-time and unpaid) had similar duties and powers. He was also empowered to enjoy the assistance of a (night) watchman.

3. If an offender was not caught red-handed a `hue & cry’ would be got up.

4. All free men were to keep arms for use when required.

5. It was the Constable’s duty to bring offenders before the courts.

This system endured with very little modification down to the beginning of the 19th century in the countryside, with the Justices and High Sheriff replacing the Hundredmen in the overall control and administration of justice. Things were different in the towns, where from the 12th century affairs were organised according to Royal Charter, each successive charter extending the power of the Burgesses allowing them to raise funds by public subscription and to appoint Constables.

By 1682 the town of Derby had two Serjeants-at-Mace who acted as Constables and were paid a sum of £1-1s-0d per week and received a new hat and cloak every two years!But there was a different kind of justice meted out away from the towns as evidenced in 1693 when a farm girl was burnt at the stake at Swanwick for murdering her master. With the industrialisation of the county from the 1770’s, the subsequent rise in population led eventually to the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835.

This abolished the Chartered Towns system and imposed a uniform system of local government which allowed the setting up of Borough Police Forces in Derby and Chesterfield in 1836.

Derby Borough had eight men and Chesterfield had seven, both under a Head Constable and an Inspector. Constables were appointed by a Watch Committee and had the power to act in the countryside as well as the borough, and Magistrates could appoint special constables who were paid 3/6d per day. In Chesterfield the constables were appointed for night duty only, and during the day the town was looked after by the old `watch & ward’, a body of men unkindly described by a contemporary writer as`so old and decrepit that they were hardly able to lift a stick to defend themselves"?

The County Police Act of 1839 allowed Justices to set up police forces in rural areas, but the population of Derbyshire were against the idea because of the cost, thus the only policing was done by Parish Constables, part time officers who were elected by the ratepayers of each parish.

In the mid 1840’s, with crime and disorder getting out of hand following the increases in population through industrialisation and the influx of highly disorderly navvies to build the railways, the poor parish constables found it impossible to maintain order, and lock-ups were built at Alfreton, Ashbourne, Bakewell, Belper and Wirksworth.

The lock-ups did nothing to aid the parish constable at Matlock Bath; shortly after the new railway had opened several train loads of young hot-heads from Manchester arrived during Wakes Week and ran amok and wrecked the town, with the parish constable completely helpless.

Amazingly the citizen was still deemed responsible for the apprehension of felons – as in the Middle Ages! Constables in 1849 were paid 18/- (90p) a week and were given free uniforms, blue cutaway tail-coats, white duck trousers – and a top hat!

By 1854 eleven Superintendent Constables supported the parish constables. Each lived over his local lock-up and was paid £140 a year and had to provide his own clothing which met the approval of the local magistrates, – only the official buttons were supplied!

The County Police Act of 1856 led to the formation of the Derbyshire County Constabulary in 1857 with headquarters at Belper. By 1862 there were eight divisions, and the new H.Q. had moved to Derby. The Chesterfield Division was established at Beetwell Street in 1861, – and by 1895 had 37 constables under the command of Deputy Chief Constable Elijah Carline.

The `modern’ police force had arrived – but the policeman’s lot was still very little compared to the ultra-efficient, motorised, high-tech force of today. The bobbies were still afoot, and the Chesterfield force provided the town’s only fire and ambulance services well into the second world war!

This article has been brought to you by our resident peak district writerTom Bates